Robbie Fulks & Linda Gail Lewis - Wild! Wild! Wild! (2018)

Wild! Wild! Wild!, the new collaboration between Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and rock-and-roll royalty Linda Gail Lewis, gleefully lives up to its title. It's Americana music that's as butt- shakin' as Beale Street, deep-rooted as the Grand Ole Opry, and hip as a trip to The Strip. Subversive as it is reverential, the album jumps the genre tracks of nitty-gritty rock-and-roll, country-and-western, rockabilly, jump swing, and gospel, landing in a strange slice of spacetime - call it 1954 - when all these were One (and Linda was seven). Robbie Fulks, the record's producer, is ""one of the most observant and wry songwriters of the past two decades"" ( Rolling Stone). Ground-zero Louisiana- born rocker Linda Gail Lewis is the younger sister and frequent performing partner of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose piano innovations she carries forward. Her present-at-the-creation cred buoys the record while Robbie - who sings, plays, leads the band, writes most of the songs, and arranges the others- provides an anchoring sensibility, one that savors old sounds but sidesteps nostalgia. Their two talents have fashioned a record that's urgent, honest, and fun. Remember fun?